The war of the streaming services is in full gear, and one of the newer players in the field is NBCUniversal’s Peacock. Up until now, the service has been viewed as a bit of an underdog despite the major company behind it, but it seems that things are actually going pretty well for the new service during its initial launch period. Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts spoke during a virtual conference earlier today, and during the event, he revealed that Peacock has reached more than 15 million sign-ups thus far (via THR).
They also revealed that Comcast Cable is trending towards adding more than 500,000 broadband subscribers in the third quarter and welcoming more into the NBCUniversal internet family can only mean good things for Peacock, especially at X-Finity users can get Peacock for free as part of their subscription.
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Peacock had already amassed 10 million signups by the end of July, and Roberts said that the big start had “exceeded our high expectations.”
“I am encouraged” about the streaming service’s early days,” Roberts said. He also brought up the Comcast install base, saying that Peacock is the number two app just behind Netflix in Comcast broadband-only homes. For homes with the Xfinity X1 TV service, it is currently number three behind Netflix and YouTube, though Roberts said it is closing in on that second spot.
As for the future, NBCU says Peacock hopes to see the service attract 30 million to 35 million monthly active accounts by 2024.
Roberts admitted that 2021 is going to be rather rough for NBCUniversal’s entertainment arm, as the number of money-making hits is understandably down in 2020 due to the coronavirus, and they’ll need to increase spending in 2021 to put more things into production.
“2020 isn’t really launching a lot of new movies, next year we are going to have a down year even as we may have a strong slate,” Roberts said. “It is probably going to take to 2022 to be back to normalization.”
Roberts did share some hopeful signs though, saying “We are not back to where we were, but I think there are real, encouraging signs.
